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Thomas Traherne
| deathplace = Teddington], England, UK | occupation = Poet, Theologian | movement = Metaphysical }} Rev. Thomas Traherne, (1636 or 1637 - 27 September 1674?) was an English poet and religious writer. Life Overview Traherne was the son of a shoemaker at Hereford where (or at Ledbury) he was probably born. Very few facts concerning him have been preserved, and indeed his very existence had been forgotten until some of his MS were discovered on a bookstall in 1896, without, however, anything to identify the author. Their discoverer, Mr. W.T. Brooke, was inclined to attribute them to Henry Vaughan, in which he was supported by A.B.Grosart, and the latter was about to bring out a new edition of Vaughan's poems in which they were to be included. This was, however, prevented by his death. The credit of identification is due to Bertram Dobell, who had become the possessor of another volume of MS, and who rejecting, after due consideration, the claims of Vaughan, followed up the very slender clues available until he had established the authorship of Traherne. All the facts that his diligent investigations were successful in collecting were that Traherne was entered as a commoner at Oxford in 1652, earned a B.A., left the university for a time, entered into the sacred function, and in 1661 was actually created M.A. About that time he became rector of Crednell, near Hereford, and in 1669 Bachelor of Divinity; and that after remaining at Crednell for over 9 years he was appointed private chaplain to the Lord Keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, who on his retirement from office retained him as a member of his household at Teddington until his death in 1674, Traherene himself dying 3 months later. Traherne also appears to have been incumbent of Teddington, or perhaps more probably, curate to a pluralist incumbent. The complete oblivion into which Traherne had fallen is the more remarkable when the quality of his poetry, which places him on a level with Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw, is considered; and that he appears in his own day to have had some reputation as a scholar and controversialist. His Roman Forgeries (1673) achieved some note. His next work, Christian Ethics, which was not published until after his death, appears to have fallen dead, and is extremely rare: it is described by Dobell as "full of eloquence, persuasiveness, sagacity, and piety." Centuries of Meditations consists of short reflections on religious and moral subjects, etc. The Poems constitute his main claim to remembrance and, as already stated, are of a high order. With occasional roughness of meter they display powerful imagination, a deep and rich vein of original thought, and true poetic force and fire. It has been pointed out that in some of them the author anticipates the essential doctrines of the Berkeleian philosophy, and in them is also revealed a personality of rare purity and fascination.John William Cousin, "Traherne, Thomas," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 384. Wikisource, Web, Mar. 13, 2018. Youth and education Traherne was, according to Anthony a Wood, a "shoemaker's son of Hereford." He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652, and after earning a B.A. in 1656 took holy orders. In the following year he was appointed rector of Credenhill, near Hereford, and in 1661 earned an M.A. degree.Britannica 1911, 27, 155. Career Traherne led, we are told, a simple and devout life, and was well read in primitive antiquity and the fathers. After remaining at Crednell for over 9 years, he found a good patron in Sir Orlando Bridgeman, lord keeper of the seals from 1667 to 1672. Traherne became his domestic chaplain. On his retirement, Bridgeman retained Traherene as a member of his household at Teddington until his death in 1674, Traherene himself dying 3 months later. Traherne also appears to have been incumbent of Teddington, or perhaps more probably, curate to a pluralist incumbent. He died at Bridgeman's house at Teddington on or about 27 September 1674. Writing Prose His prose works are Roman Forgeries (1673), Christian Ethics (1675), and A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God (1699). Only the 1st was published in his lifetime. Poems His poems have a curious history. They were left in manuscript and presumably passed with the rest of his library into the hands of his brother Philip. They then became apparently the possession of the Skipps of Ledbury, Herefordshire. When the property of this family was dispersed in 1888 the value of the manuscripts was unrecognized, for in 1896 or 1897 they were discovered by W.T. Brooke on a street bookstall. Grosart bought them, and proposed to include them in his edition of the works of Henry Vaughan, to whom he was disposed to assign them. He left this task uncompleted, and Bertram Dobell, who eventually secured the MSS, was able to establish the authorship of Thomas Traherne. Traherne was a metaphysical poet, and perhaps the most celebratory of all of them. Although his links with Neo-Platonism and the Cambridge Platonists have been much noted, he also drew on the writings of Aristotle and on the Early Church Fathers for his concept of Man. His writing expresses an ardent, almost childlike love of God, similar to that of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and a firm belief in man's relation to and creation from divinity. Inge, Denise. “A Poet Comes Home: Thomas Traherne, Theologian in a New Century.” Anglican Theological Review. Spring, 2004. Vol. 86. Issue 2. p335-348. His poetry frequently explores the glory of creation and what he perceived as his intimate relationship with God. Little mention is made of sin and suffering in the works that dominated 20th century criticism, and some have seen his verse as bordering upon pantheism (or perhaps panentheism). Of the power of nature to inform the mind with beauty, and the ecstatic harmony of a child with the natural world, the earlier poems, which contain his best work, are full. In their manner, as in their matter, they remind the reader of Blake and Wordsworth. Traherne has at his best an excellence all his own, but there can be no reasonable doubt that he was familiar both with the poems of Herbert and of Vaughan. The poems on childhood may well have been inspired by Vaughan's lines entitled "The Retreat". His poetry is essentially metaphysical and his workmanship is uneven, but the collection contains passages of great beauty. The Ceremonial Law, from the Folger library, is an unfinished epic poem of over 1,800 lines. His poems were published in The Poetical Works (1903) and Poems of Felicity (1910). ''Meditations'' The discovery included, beside the poems, 4 complete "Centuries of Meditation," short paragraphs embodying reflections on religion and morals. Some of these, evidently autobiographical in character, describe a childhood from which the "glory and the dream " was slow to depart. The discoveries responsible for his renewed vindication as a theologian, beside the poems, are the Centuries of Meditations, a collection of short paragraphs or meditations reflecting on Christian life and ministry, philosophy, happiness, desire and childhood. These are gathered in groups of 100, 4 complete centuries and an unfinished 5th. Some of these, evidently autobiographical in character, describe a childhood from which the "glory and the dream" was slow to depart. Of the power of nature to inform the mind with beauty, and the ecstatic harmony of a child with the natural world, the earlier poems, which contain his best work, are full. In their manner, as in their matter, they remind the reader of William Blake and William Wordsworth. The poems on childhood may well have been inspired by Vaughan's lines entitled The Retreat. He quotes George Herbert's "Longing" in the newly discovered Lambeth Manuscript.Thomas Traherne, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. Web, July 8, 2011. However, recent discoveries such as the Select Meditations, Inducements to Retiredness and A Sober View of Dr Twisse contain both discussions of church doctrines surrounding the question of sin, and moments of personal confession. These discussions are, however, far less dour and damning than one would expect to find in similar works of the period by Puritan or Catholic theologians. The following passage, from Centuries of Meditation, illustrates just how little focus Traherne placed on the subject of sin in that work: :I knew by intuition those things which since my Apostasy, I collected again by the highest reason. My very ignorance was advantageous. I seemed as one brought into the Estate of Innocence. All things were spotless and pure and glorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious, I knew not that there were any sins or complaints or laws.Traherne, Thomas. ed. Betram Dobell. The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne. 1636?-1664: Original Manuscripts. Oxford University Press. London, UK. 1906.}} And yet, in the newly discovered work A Sober View of Dr Twisse — a work devoted to the question of election and reprobation—he writes: "He was excluded the Kingdom of Heaven, where nothing can enter that hates God, and whence nothing can be excluded that loves him. The loss of that Love is Hell: the Sight and Possession of that Love is Heaven. Thus did sin exclude him Heaven."''A Sober View sect XVI, pp 133 in Ross, Complete Works volume I. Traherne was also concerned with the stability of the Restoration church in England. His confrontations with Roman Catholics and Nonconformists alike have this in common, a passion for his national church.Inge,Denise, "Thomas Traherne and the Socinian Heresy in ''Commentaries of Heaven", Notes and Queries, volume 252 no 4: December 2007 pp. 412-416. Another great passion is his love of the natural world frequently displayed in a very Romantic treatment of nature. While Traherne credits a divine source for its creation, his praise of nature is nothing less than that which one would expect to find in Thoreau. Many consider him a writer of the sublime, and, in his writing, he tried to reclaim the lost appreciation for the natural world as well as paying tribute to what he knew of in nature that was more powerful than he was. In this sense, Traherne seems to have anticipated the Romantic movement over 130 years before it occurred.Blevins, Jacob. Ed. Re-Reading Thomas Traherne: A Collection of New Critical Essays.''Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Publishing. Phoenix. 2007. There is frequent discussion of man's almost symbiotic relationship with nature, as well as frequent use of ''literal setting (that is, an attempt to faithfully reproduce a sense experience from a given moment), a technique later used frequently by Wordsworth. The Centuries appeared in 1908. The Select Meditations were only published in 1997. In 1996 and 1997, another of Traherne’s manuscripts were discovered in the Folger Library in Washington DC by Julia Smith and Laetitia Yeandle. A 2nd was discovered in Lambeth Palace Library in London by Jeremy Maule. The Lambeth Manuscript contains 4, and a fragmentary 5h, mainly prose works known as: Inducements to Retiredness, A Sober View of Dr Twisse, Seeds of Eternity, The Kingdom of God and the fragment Love. For accounts of these discoveries see the Times Literary Supplement articles by Julia Smith and Laetitia Yeandle (7 November 1997) and Denise Inge and Cal Macfarlane (2 June 2000). These two finds are a primary contributing factor to why Traherne is now being considered as much as a theologian as a poet. Quotations *''The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven''. First Century, Meditation 31 * You are as prone to love, as the sun is to shine. Second Century, Meditation 65 * As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well. First Century, Meditation 8 * Souls are God's jewels. "First Century, Meditation 15" *''The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I though it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.... And so it was with much ado I was corrupted and made to learn the dirty devices of the world.'' "Third Century, Meditation 3" Recognition Posthumous success As so little of Traherne's work had (apparently) survived his death, Traherne was previously labeled a “missing person” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. In 2004, thanks to a number of additional discoveries, his status changed so much that he is no longer labeled a “missing person." He is now highly regarded, such that if there were a picture of him (no portrait of Traherne has been authenticated), he would be put next to other well-knowns such as Wordsworth.Slayton, Mary. “A Poet-Cleric's ‘Little Booke’ Authors.” E. Source: Modern Age. Summer, 2005. Vol. 47. Issue 3. p266-269. Traherene's poem "News" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900."News". Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919. Bartleby.com, Web, May 10, 2012. Veneration Traherne is honored in the calendar of saints of the Church of England on October 10, and in that of the Episcopal Church (USA) on September 27. In popular culture Traherne's work was personally influential on the thought of such notables as Thomas Merton, Dorothy Sayers, Elizabeth Jennings and C.S. Lewis (who called Centuries of Meditations "almost the most beautiful book in English)." A stanza from Traherne is quoted in the movie Amazing Grace, by abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson quotes, "Strange treasures in this fair world appear..." and goes on to say it is from a poem by Thomas Traherne. The British composer Gerald Finzi set several Traherne texts to music (Dies natalis, Opus 8, completed 1939). The first stanza of Traherne's The Rapture is employed in the form of a riddle, by an assassin of sorts called a 'warrior-poet', in The Broken God, a 1992 science fiction novel with philosophical leanings written by David Zindell. The Incredible String Band quote from Traherne extensively in the song Douglas Traherne Harding on their album Wee Tam and the Big Huge, relating the philosophy of Traherne to that of Douglas Harding. The title and some of the thought of Richard Wilbur's poem A World Without Objects Is a Sensible Emptiness comes from Traherne's Centuries of Meditations, specifically Second Century, Meditation 65. Phil Rickman frequently refers to Traherne's poetry in his Merrily Watkin's series of novels. In his award-winning book The Snow Leopard (Bantam: 1978, 216-7), Peter Matthiessen cites Traherne's mystical, even Buddhist-like sense of nature found in Centuries of Meditations. Publications Poetry * The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne 1636?-1674 (edited by Bertram Dobell). London: Dobell, 1903. *''Traherne's Poems of Felicity'' (edited by H.I. Bell. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910. *''The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, faithfully reprinted from the Author's Original Manuscript, together with Poems of Felicity, reprinted from the Burney manuscript, and Poems from Various Sources'' (edited by Gladys I. Wade). London: P.J. & A.E. Dobell, 1932. *''Commentaries of Heaven: The Poems'' (edited by D.D.C. Chambers). Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universitat Salzburg, 1989. Prose *''Roman Forgeries, Or, A True Account of False Records Discovering the Impostures and Counterfeit Antiquities of the Church of Rome''. London: printed by S.& B. Griffin for Jonathan Edwin, 1673. *''Christian Ethicks: Or, Divine Morality. Opening the Way to Blessedness, By the Rules of Vertue and Reason''. London: printed for Jonathan Edwin, 1675. ** (edited by Carol L. Marks and George Robert Guffey). Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968. *''A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God, In Several Most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the same''. London: Printed for Samuel Keble, 1699. *"Meditations on the Creation", in A Collection of Meditations and Devotions, in Three Parts. London: published by Nathaniel Spinkes, printed for D. Midwinter, 1717. **''Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation'' (edited by George Robert Guffey). Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1966) *''Centuries of Meditations'' (edited by Bertram Dobell). London: Dobell, 1908. ** Select Meditations (edited by Julia Smith). Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1997. ** Waking Up in Heaven: A Contemporary Edition of Centuries of Meditations (edited by David Buresh). Hesed Press, 2002. *''A Serious and Pathetic Contemplation of the Mercies of God, In Several most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the same'' (edited by Roy Daniells). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1941. * Landscapes of Glory: Daily Readings with Thomas Traherne (edited by Donald Allchin). Dartman Longman Todd, 1989. Collected editions *''Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings'' (2 volumes, edited by H.M. Margoliouth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958. *''Poems, Centuries, and Three Thanksgivings'' (edited by Anne Ridler). London: Oxford University Press, 1966. * Thomas Traherne: Poetry and Prose (edited by Denise Inge). London: SPCK, 2002."Thomas Traherne," Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Web, July 29, 2012. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.1637-1674, Poetry Foundation, Web, July 29, 2012. See also *The metaphysical poets *List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 14, 3018. * Happiness and Holiness, Thomas Traherne and His Writings, Denise Inge (ed) Canterbury Press, 2008. * A Mind in Frame, The Theological Thought of Thomas Traherne, Thomas Richard Sluberski (ed), The Lincoln Library, 2008. * Wanting Like a God: Desire and Freedom in the Work of Thomas Traherne, Denise Inge, London: SCM, (2009) Notes External links ;Poems *"News". *Thomas Traherne profile and 1 poem ("Shadows in the Water") at the Academy of American Poets. *Selected Poetry of Thomas Traherne (1837-1674) (6 poems) at Representative Poetry Online. *Thomas Traherne in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: "Wonder," "The Vision," "The Rapture," "Dumbness," "My Spirit," "Amendment," "The Anticipation," "Love," "A Hymn Upon St. Bartholomew's Day". *Thomas Traherne 1637-1674 at the Poetry Foundation. * Thomas Traherne at PoemHunter (31 poems) *Thomas Traherne at Poetry Nook (81 poems) ;Prose *[http://www.spiritofprayer.com/traherne.php Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditation] at The Spirit of Prayer. ;About *The Strange Case of Thomas Traherne by Forrest Gander * Original article is at: " https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Traherne,_Thomas Traherene, Thomas] ;Etc. *The Traherne Association Official website. Category:1636 births Category:1674 deaths Category:17th-century poets Category:Christian poets Category:English-language poets Category:English poets Category:Mystic poets Category:People from Hereford Category:Poets Category:Christian mystics Category:Metaphysical poets